Television broadcasting of today involves switching channel feeds from among many available video feeds, each of which may be carried to the broadcasting facility using a variety of signal formats. Source material for live broadcast is typically captured from multiple cameras, video servers, pre-produced material and graphics, assembled and then broadcast directly from a control room or stored for broadcast at a later date.
The legacy video signals, such as serial data interface (SDI) signals, are groomed, predictable and easily provisioned for routing and switching. Other forms of video signals are becoming more popular, such as internet protocol (IP), as media transfer over IP interconnections and using cloud sourcing is now ubiquitous. The downside of bringing in IP signals as video feeds is the asynchronous, bursty, and jittery behavior of such data. Routing and switching of IP signals in a broadcasting environment, particularly for real time broadcasting is a challenge since there is no predictable blanking period to make the switch, which risks a visible glitch on the broadcast at the moment of switching. Existing IP routers are incapable of tracking any regular time signature for packetized data and therefore routing and switching centers must resort to converting the IP video signals to baseband signals, like SDI video, for glitch free switching.